Whitman (Volume 10) (Paperback)

Book may have numerous typos, missing text, images, or index. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. 1904. Excerpt: ... HIS RELATION TO ART AND LITERATURE WHITMAN protests against his " Leaves " being judged merely as literature; but at the same time, if they are not good literature, that of course ends the matter. Still, while the questions of art, of form, of taste, are paramount in most other poets, -- certainly in all third and fourth rate poets, -- in Whitman they are swallowed up in other questions and values. In numerous passages, by various figures and allegories, Whitman indicates that he would not have his book classed with the order of mere literary productions. "Shut not your doors to me, proud libraries," he says in one of the "Inscriptions," -- "For that which was lacking in all your well-fill'd shelves, yet needed most, I bring. Forth from the war emerging, a book I have made, The words of my book nothing, the drift of it everything, A book separate, not link'd with the rest nor felt by the intellect, But you, ye untold latencies will thrill to every page." Not linked with the studied and scholarly productions, not open to the mere bookish mind, but more akin to the primitive utterances and oracles of historic humanity. A literary age like ours lays great stress upon the savor of books, art, culture, and has little taste for the savor of real things, the real man, which we get in Whitman. "It is the true breath of humanity," says Renan, "and not literary merit, that constitutes the beautiful." An Homeric poem written to-day, he goes on to say, would not be beautiful, because it would not be true; it would not contain this breath of a living humanity. "It is not Homer who is beautiful, it is the Homeric life." The literary spirit begat Tennyson, begat Browning, begat New England poets, but it did not in the same sense beget Whitman, any more than it begat Homer or Job or Isaiah. The art...